The faeries and elves of the upcoming Lorwyn Magic: The Gathering set have an unlikely companion: it's Spitting Dilophosaurus from the Jurassic Park crossover cards. This creature already had a pretty high value, sitting at the $15 mark for the past few months, but it's ramping up quickly right now, doubling in value to $32 in just the past seven days.
The reason for this is pretty clear; it's because Lorwyn Eclipsed, the first set in 2026's MTG release schedule, has a -1/-1 counter theme. Spitting Dilophosaurus is one of the best support cards out there for a -1/-1 counters deck, not only popping counters onto creatures whenever he attacks, but also making them unable to block, a huge debuff.
There aren't that many powerful -1/-1 counter cards, and basically every MTG commander that uses them has to consider Spitting Dilophosaurus for a slot. Since copies are in short supply, that's driven this card's value pretty high.
Shadowmoor had a major -1 counters theme, so there was always a decent chance Lorwyn Eclipsed would feature this mechanic. We got our first signs of this in late September, when the Elemental Incarnation Emptiness was revealed - Spitting Dilophosaurus went up from 10 to 15 dollars after this.
A single card wasn't exactly hard confirmation, though. This could have been a one-off nod to an old mechanic, something WotC occasionally does at mythic rarity. But more spoilers have appeared, and we now know there's a named -1/-1 mechanic, Blight.
High Perfect Morcant afflicts your opponents with blight, making them all put a -1/-1 counter on a creature whenever an elf ETBs. It's a dubious commander for Spitting Dilophosaurus, which is never going to pass as an elf, even with prosthetic ears, but it's caused this price spike because it seems to indicate that putting these counters on opposing creatures will be a key part of the set.
That said, another spoiler card Dose of Dawnglow reveals that blight can also apply to your own creatures. That's useless for the Dilophosaurus, so if that's how the mechanic is typically used, this spike could still be a bit premature.
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